“After This Manner Therefore Pray…”

“After this manner therefore pray ye:  ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” –Matthew 6:9 (KJV).

            Prayer as we’re taught it in the Bible, is dialogue between God and his people.  The disciples had observed Jesus going apart to pray.  One of the Lord’s disciples made this request:  “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1, KJV).  The result of Jesus teaching His disciples to pray is what we have termed “The Lord’s Prayer’ (recorded in Matthew 6:9-13 and in Luke 11:2-4).  But a better name for this prayer, which we sometimes pray in concert in public worship, would be “The Disciples’ Prayer,” for in it Jesus was fulfilling the request and teaching the disciples how to pray.  It is a contrast to hypocritical prayers, those uttered to be heard by men’s ears and to sound well in public.  Disciples are to beware of this type of prayer.  Likewise, we are to avoid vain repetitions.  So when you pray this prayer, really mean it from the heart!

            It would be well for us to remember, when we pattern our praying after the prayer Jesus taught in Matthew and Luke, that he was emphasizing how we are to pray.  The prayer covers adoration of God (Matthew 6:9).  Next is a plea for God’s kingdom life to be practiced on earth as in heaven (Now wouldn’t that be amazing? We should pray to that end!).  Then comes a petition for physical needs: “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Scholars generally agree that this plea is recognizing God as the provider of all we need, not only food, shelter and clothing, but whatever is necessary to our health and well-being that would help us grow in the grace and in the character and spirit of Christ the Savior.  The fourth petition is for forgiveness of sins and abstinence from temptation.  How well did Jesus know, when He taught the disciples this prayer, that even though they loved Him and wanted to follow Him, they were still bound about with human frailties and the bent toward temptation.  How we need to emphasize and pray earnestly for our own forgiveness, even as we forgive those who perpetrate unkind actions toward us.  Then the prayer returns again to adoration of God.  The Father that Jesus taught His disciples to direct their petitions toward is in control and He is good.  In our prayers we express recognition that He has “power and glory, forever.”

            Many quotations on prayer inspire and inform me.  Here is one I especially like written by Mark Hopkins.  I’ve underlined it in one of my prayer journals:  “Our prayer and God’s mercy are like two buckets in a well; while the one ascends the other descends.”  Likewise, this one by William Temple:  “Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it: it is the petition for forgiveness.”  And William Law wrote: “There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.”  And in the words of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American poet, the words, set to the hymn tune “Rest” by Frederick C. Maker (1844-1927) has these words of insight:  “(1) Dear Lord and Father of mankind,/Forgive our foolish ways;/Reclothe us in our rightful mind;/In purer lives Thy service find,/In deeper reverence praise. (2) Drop Thy still dews of quietness,/Till all our strivings cease;/Take from our souls the strain and stress,/And let our ordered lives confess/The beauty of Thy peace.”

            What prayer will you sincerely pray to “Our Father in Heaven? 

                                                                                                -Ethelene Dyer Jones 03.30.2014